I have two HDDs and both are GPT partitioned. Windows build 10041 and openSUSE 13.2 and Tumbleweed were running well… but for some reason, windows never updated from that build, and now when I install windows (10130) from USB (using rufus and choosing GPT partition option), I get this error “Sorry, we couldn’t create a new partition or locate an existing one.”
I researched and tried many tips like giving the main hard disk port 0 option, or even disconnecting the other hard disk and DVD drive… no matter what I did so far, this error doesn’t disappear. Many tips also ask to repartition… but that is also not a sure remedy as people’s responses indiacate… I was wondering if this could be due to my root partition being BTRFS and /boot is a subpartition under the same root partition (of course /efi/boot is a separate partition), and perhaps windows expects a separate boot partition? Anyone faced this issue?
On 2015-07-04 10:46, feb8born wrote:
> responses indiacate… I was wondering if this could be due to my root
> partition being BTRFS and /boot is a subpartition under the same root
> partition, and perhaps windows expects a separate boot partition? Anyone
> faced this issue?
Windows should expect an EFI partition, formatted as FAT. I think it is
mounted as /boot/efi or something.
Windows should not care, nor can read, anything in btrfs, ext2/3/4, xfs,
reiser, etc.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))
that’s already there and yet, it wants to create another efi partition… and then, the installation doesn’t work due to the above error…
On 2015-07-04 13:16, feb8born wrote:
>
> that’s already there and yet, it wants to create another efi partition…
> and then, the installation doesn’t work due to the above error…
Well, then you need an UEFI booting expert, and I’m not. Sorry.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))
Hi
From openSUSE can you show the output from gdisk and lsblk
lsblk
gdisk -l /dev/sda
gdisk -l /dev/sdb
I just installed build 10162 here on a single disk though without problems with tumbleweed.
lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 1.8T 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 300M 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 100M 0 part
├─sda3 8:3 0 128M 0 part
├─sda4 8:4 0 239.5G 0 part
├─sda5 8:5 0 500G 0 part /home
├─sda6 8:6 0 100G 0 part /
├─sda7 8:7 0 1000G 0 part /HDD/data
├─sda8 8:8 0 22.6G 0 part [SWAP]
└─sda9 8:9 0 426M 0 part /boot/efi
sdb 8:16 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─sdb1 8:17 0 156M 0 part
├─sdb2 8:18 0 12G 0 part
├─sdb3 8:19 0 40G 0 part /HDD/root
├─sdb4 8:20 0 300G 0 part /HDD/home
└─sdb5 8:21 0 579.4G 0 part /HDD/data1
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom
gdisk -l /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.0
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 3907029168 sectors, 1.8 TiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 8D956F70-267E-47D0-8122-DB8284B4D876
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 3907029134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2157 sectors (1.1 MiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 616447 300.0 MiB 2700 Basic data partition
2 616448 821247 100.0 MiB 0700 EFI system partition
3 821248 1083391 128.0 MiB 0C01 Microsoft reserved ...
4 1083392 503316479 239.5 GiB 0700 Basic data partition
5 503316480 1551894527 500.0 GiB 0700 primary
6 1551894528 1761607679 100.0 GiB 0700 primary
7 1761607680 3858765823 1000.0 GiB 0700 primary
8 3858765824 3906156543 22.6 GiB 0700 primary
9 3906156544 3907028991 426.0 MiB EF00 primary
gdisk -l /dev/sdb
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.0
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sdb: 1953525168 sectors, 931.5 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 0BBEF1B0-F921-4A6B-B94C-8355667B4376
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1953525134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 3437 sectors (1.7 MiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 321535 156.0 MiB EF00 primary
2 321536 25495551 12.0 GiB 0700 primary
3 25495552 109385727 40.0 GiB 0700 primary
4 109385728 738539519 300.0 GiB 0700 primary
5 738539520 1953523711 579.3 GiB 0700 primary
One strange thing is, when windows wants to start installation, my EFI partition for openSUSE (sda9) is not recognised and it wants to create a new EFI partition sda2, but then, the coding for that partition is not correct, while sda9’s name is showing up as a primary partition… could this be an issue?
Hi
If you mount sda2 (as root user) and check the contents and also post the info of the second command;
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
ls /mnt
umount /mnt
efiboomgr -v
I windows efi is present, should be able to change the type to ef00 and then add to the efi nvram.
It seems to an “issue”.
From the reports I have seen, Microsoft wants the EFI partition to use FAT32. However, if it was created during an opensuse install, then it was probably formatted as FAT16.
Hi
Easy enough to check…
parted /dev/sda 'print'
parted /dev/sdb 'print'
I pre-prepare my disks for dual/multibooting so I’m pretty sure I formatted to fat32 (which it is on my windows 10/tumbleweed).
Hi, Thanks both of you 
So indeed, that’s the case…
parted /dev/sda ‘print’
Model: ATA WDC WD20EZRX-22D (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 316MB 315MB ntfs Basic data partition hidden, diag
2 316MB 420MB 105MB fat32 EFI system partition msftdata
3 420MB 555MB 134MB ntfs Microsoft reserved partition msftres
4 555MB 258GB 257GB ntfs Basic data partition msftdata
5 258GB 795GB 537GB xfs primary msftdata
6 795GB 902GB 107GB btrfs primary msftdata
7 902GB 1976GB 1074GB xfs primary msftdata
8 1976GB 2000GB 24.3GB linux-swap(v1) primary msftdata
9 2000GB 2000GB 447MB fat16 primary boot, esp
So, what can we do to change it?
Also, the output of
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
ls /mnt
**Recovery** Recovery.txt
umount /mnt
efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0004,0001,000A,000C,0008
Boot0000* opensuse-secureboot HD(9,GPT,c5bcad96-f2ed-4f4a-a219-dd7760643d36,0xe8d33800,0xd5000)/File(\EFI\opensuse
\shim.efi)
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager HD(1,GPT,1e03ad32-79bb-45fc-b628-84e449ebfb77,0x800,0x4e000)/File(\EFI\Microsoft\Boo
t\bootmgfw.efi)WINDOWS.........x...B.C.D.O.B.J.E.C.T.=.{.9.d.e.a.8.6.2.c.-.5.c.d.d.-.4.e.7.0.-.a.c.c.1.-.f.3.2.b.3.4
.4.d.4.7.9.5.}...o................
Boot0004* opensuse HD(1,MBR,0x571148304,0x800,0x201cc2)/File(\EFI\opensuse\grubx64.efi)
Boot0008 Hard Drive BBS(HD,,0x0)AMGOAMNO..........S.A.T.A. . .P.S.:. .W.D.C. .W.D.2.0.E.Z.R.X.-.2.2.D.8.P.B.0...
......................rN.D+..,.\...........R..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L.S.A.T.A. . .P.S.:. .W.D.C. .W.D.2.0.E.Z.R.X.-.2.2.D.8.P
.B.0......AMBOAMNO.........S.A.T.A. . .S.S.:. .W.D.C. .W.D.1.0.E.A.R.S.-.0.0.Y.5.B.1.........................rN.D+..
,.\...........P..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L.S.A.T.A. . .S.S.:. .W.D.C. .W.D.1.0.E.A.R.S.-.0.0.Y.5.B.1......AMBO
Boot000A* UEFI: WDC WD20EZRX-22D8PB0 PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1f,0x2)/Ata(0,1,0)/HD(2,GPT,c176f7a1-f6da-4c53-8615-e9a0f
f12898f,0x96800,0x32000)AMBO
Boot000C* CD/DVD Drive BBS(CDROM,,0x0)AMGOAMNO........m.T.S.S.T.c.o.r.p. .C.D.D.V.D.W. .S.H.-.2.2.2.B.B............
........A.........................>..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L.8.R.T.S.G.6.C.G.0.6.D.0.V.W. . . . . . ......AMBO
What version of Windows? 7 does not work with secure boot
Hi
It’s 10 preview…
Missed that. hard to tell then
Hi
What you could do is copy the contents of /dev/sda9 to a tar file, then restore it after formating /dev/sda9 to fat32.
pwd
/root
tar -C /boot/efi -cvzf temp_efi.tgz EFI
ls -la *.tgz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13357841 Jul 5 18:06 temp_efi.tgz
If you see the files created in the verbose output, and check the archive, in theory format the partition fat32, then replace the files via;
tar -C /boot/efi -xvzf temp_efi.tgz EF
You would then need to ensure /dev/sda2 is not set to type ef00.
Else, just let windows 10 use sda2 to install it’s efi files, all should be good as the entries in nvram (efibootmgr output) point at the different mounts anyway…
Thanks! I converted the EFI partition to FAT32 and deleted all other windows created partitions at the time of install. So windows 10 was not trying to create any other partitions this time, but then, it still failed to install with the same error message… “We couldn’t create a new partition or locate an existing one. For more information, see the Setup log files.” Note sure what is causing this…
Hi
Then I would try setting the type of /dev/sda2 to ef00 with gdisk and then format to fat32 and see what occurs.
Windows was being quite stubborn That also didn’t work… and as a last resort, i had to backup my data and deleted all the partitions on sda and then windows easily installed on the unallocated space which I later adjusted and now TW is running well with Windows 10
However, I first installed openSUSE TW on sdb, then installed windows 10 on sda (windows used the EFI on sdb automatically). Until then, dual booting worked well… Then I installed another instance of TW on sda using a different EFI on sda (as the earlier one would have been overwritten), but now, I can only boot between TW on sda and windows 10… how do I boot on TW on sdb (which I later want to use for openSUSE 42)?
Hi
Use the efibootmgr to create an nvram entry pointing to the sdb esp, eg;
efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sdb -L "openSUSE Tumbleweed secure" -l "\\EFI\\opensuse\\shim.efi"
efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sdb -L "openSUSE Tumbleweed" -l "\\EFI\\opensuse\\grubx64.efi"
Thank you, it worked and I could boot into the sdb partition. However, Once again I noticed the peculiar issue that I always notice when installing two versions of openSUSE, like in this case… the one installed later works well, like it is now. However, the previous one (the one on sdb in this case) goes to emergency boot and then I am able to boot it using sddm, but even then, internet doesn’t work and many of the things also don’t work as expected.
And despite not making any changes, from the last 2-3 times, the sdb system doesn’t even boot to emergency mode… it remains stuck at the messages which show that the disk has been found (the sdb disk)…